I don't get it!

Is it becoz his music is corny, cheesy, passive, predictable & unadventerous? Well if yes then so is the whole fuckin' "Smooth Jazz" movment. All of those artists sounds the same and do the same shit, tackle the same subjects and make the same live shows.

So why the hell does he get the bad rap?

Talkin' bout doube-standard in the middle of the afternoon. I was tunning into some Urban radio station at the middle of a Kenny G hounding, talking about his stuff is "flat out wack yet he's out-there making all this mad money".

Ok I'm not a fan of his and sometimes his playing get on my nerves but I HATE the hypocrisy thats going on when folks talk about him as if he's on that boat alone.

So wassup?

because he was playing in the cassette deck of my moms car when she got into a car accident when i was 6, and all the chicken we had got from Golden Skillet fell on the floor.

missfee said:

missfee said:

Can u guys be serious for a change, please?

Harlepolis said:

I never bust out so hard in a lon time!!!!! (holdin my stomach).



Whoo...anyway my dad likes him. His CD was tight. I think it was the one he had a couple of people onthere in 1994.


But when they made fun of him on the end of a South Park episode...oh that was so funny.

Hey Harle,
I think it's simple. He's the most visible. Since he's the most familiar target when someone wants to put down A/C Jazz, it also makes him the easiest target to hit and poke fun at. Same thing goes for gangsta rap or pop.
When someone is talking about the "landfill" that is gangsta rap, they don't talk about Master P, they talk about 50. If they're dissin' pop, everyone on this board knows who the easy target is there.
Honestly, I think many critics, artists and some music fans alike are jealous of guys like Kenny G, John Tesh and Yanni. I for one have never spent a dime on any of these cats, but I respect the fact that they have an audience. That's what people are jealous of. These guys never get any play on MTV, in fact I bet Kenny G wouldn't get any play on VH-1 today (and he was the original VH-1 "darling"), but artists like these are making major cheese because they've been able to carve a niche and cultivate an audience. They're making money without the help of the popular music machine. Folks are bound to hate on that.

Harlepolis said:

You're right, the whole genre known as smooth jazz Does suck Hard, but Kenny G was one of the PIONEERS of Suckdom....it took the rest of Pop/Jazz a while to get down to that level...

Seriously, though,you're right, He wasn't the only one. The late George Howard was making albums the same time that Kenny G's solo career began , and he didn't get half the venom that KG got....Najee, Kim Waters, and Gerald Albright, and a host of others soon followed that path...
All of a sudden, the market was flooded with a bunch of people tootin' on the Soprano Sax, playing what is actually light instrumental Pop music, rather than any kind of Jazz...even people that had more chops and should've known better started playing in that style....I'm a fan of early Ronnie Laws, but he's made enough bad albums in the last 10 years to guarantee a spot on The Coal Cart to Hell...I think everybody forgot what they knew, and started thinking, "Man, I gotta do what I can to get on the radio", because, unfortunately, that's all these "so -called "Jazz" stations play now-- lite instrumental Pop, and now it's not just the fake jazz, now everything laid back is played on these "smoothJazz" stations- it's just Muzak in designer clothes, basically, "...don't do anything adventurous, that won't fit our format" ...

So why does he get all the arrows---Dunno, it might be because a) he was the most successful, in terms of money and Fame(or is at infamy),and b) that eternally smiling, Michael Bolton-on-Ecstasy look he always has...

Incidentally KG didn't always suck...when he was with the early Jeff Lorber Fusion as plain ol' Kenny Gorelick, he actualy played some nice horn...
[Edited 9/14/04 9:13am]

Personally, I hold Kenny Gorelick responsible for this whole movement called Smooth Jazz and the dumbing down of Jazz!

Quite simple.... No Soul

Kenny G bad! Smooth jazz bad! Make Hopkins ears hurt!

Still doesn't make any sense to me.

So you're saying he gets all the bad rap becoz he created that mold? Ok, lets suppose so,,,but why the hell do all those artists are trying to fit that mold(despite the fact that they KNOW they're risking their artistic integrity through the process)?

And you know whats so damn ironic? Those artists resent him more than the listeners(us) even tho they're trying to make his "so called sound". Shiiit, talk about a DefComedyJam moment

RocknRollisalive said:

Child please! You can't sit here and tell me with a str8 face that the rest of those "Smooth Jazz" artists got soul.

well, maybe it's just not cool to like a guy who looks like this:

Harlepolis said:

Personally, I can't stand ANY of them, and I think they ALL lack soul. Kenny G just has a special place of hatred, sinc ehe was the one who popularized the trend. Without him, the "dumbing down" of jazz might not have happened.

Harlepolis said:

check out the rest of my earlier response... it was talking about what these same people will do to get played on the radio...

Because That's ALL these so called "Jazz" stations will play... because it DOES Make Money--- That's why these Smooth "jazz" stations are so popular...sure it sucks... Shit, look at R&b and Pop Radio! the Shit Is sad, but not enough people care about real music anymore ...there are those of us that really care, but unfortunately, most people just want something to dance to, or something they can put in the background...
[Edited 9/14/04 10:20am]

?

I don't think any one artist in particular can be blamed for the "dumbing down" of a particular genre. Artists need to be responsible for themselves. Look at all the jerks who came out imitating R. Kelley in the mid and late 90's. I doubt that Kenny G asked to be copied. If anyone here wants to blame someone for the popularity of "smooth jazz", point the finger at the millions of people who are buying it and enjoying it.

Becuase he is guilty of crimes against humanity.
If you don't believe me, pick up a copy of his greatest hits.

Because my mother loves him, and that's unacceptable. Plus, you just don't insert saccharine schlock into Satchmo's work. And I'm sure Metheny will get the ever-present "hater" rhetoric for it, but as Pat Metheny said years ago:


QUESTION: Pat, could you tell us your opinion about Kenny G - it appears you were quoted as being less than enthusiastic about him and his music. I would say that most of the serious music listeners in the world would not find your opinion surprising or unlikely - but you were vocal about it for the first time. You are generally supportive of other musicians it seems.

ANSWER: Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other either live or on records.

I first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff Lorber when they opened a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style.

He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble -- Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music.

But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs -- never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune -- consistently sharp.

Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years.

And honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than Kenny G on his chosen instruments. It would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.

Having said that, it has gotten me to thinking lately why so many jazz musicians (myself included, given the right "bait" of a question, as I will explain later) and audiences have gone so far as to say that what he is playing is not even jazz at all. Stepping back for a minute, if we examine the way he plays, especially if one can remove the actual improvising from the often mundane background environment that it is delivered in, we see that his
saxophone style is in fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably objective listeners WOULD normally quantify as being jazz.

It's just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians. So, lately I have been advocating that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty much of the rest of the world OUTSIDE of the jazz community does anyway -- and let the chips fall where they may.

And after all, why he should be judged by any other standard, why he should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does? He SHOULD be compared to John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter, for instance, on his abilities (or lack thereof) to play the soprano saxophone and his success (or lack thereof) at finding a
way to deploy that instrument in an ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the context of his instrument's legacy and potential.

As a composer of even eighth note based music, he SHOULD be compared to Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver or even Grover Washington. Suffice it to say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't fare well.

But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently".

Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.

This type of musical necrophilia -- the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers -- was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him -- and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible.

He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture -- something that we all should be totally embarrassed about -- and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.

His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring.

Since that record came out -- in protest, as insignificant as it may be, I encourage everyone to boycott Kenny G recordings, concerts and anything he is associated with. If asked about Kenny G, I will diss him and his music with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay.

Normally, I feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of their level, just trying to play good and don't really benefit from public criticism, particularly from their fellow players. but, this is different.

There ARE some things that are sacred -- and amongst any musician that has ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, Louis Armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. To ignore this trespass is to agree that NOTHING any musician has attempted to do with their life in music has any intrinsic value - and I refuse to do that. (I am also amazed that there HASN'T already been an outcry against this among music critics -- where ARE
they on this?????!?!?!?!, magazines, etc.). Everything I said here is exactly the same as what I would say to Gorelick if I ever saw him in person. and if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function -- he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

PatMetheny said:

Pat needs to have a Coke and a smile. It ain't that crucial.

First off, Kenny G "pre songbird" was a totally different cat than the Kenny G you all think of today. I saw Kenny G and his band in a small club called the second level here in sacramento. It was early 80's. He had just released the first single from his second album "Hi, How Ya Doin'" I know y'all don't want to hear me but Kenny's band was funky as hell. During the show, Kenny joked around about how Kashif told him he was going to baptise him with the funk. It wasn't until Kenny crossed over with songbird that his music turned into the sort of shit you hear between the 1st and 6th floor. When I think of Kenny G, I will always think of the dude I saw that night back in 83. Still one of the best non-prince shows I have seen. And you can't really say Kenny G started "Smooth Jazz". Some early cats like Spyro Gyra, Bob James and Earl Klugh got pretty damn smooth at times in the late 70's before Kenny was even on the scene.

It's the hair...the goddamned hair style that has stayed the same since the 80's.

And cuz Silhouette (or songbird...they sound the same) was played over and over and over. And though it's a pretty song...no one gets excited about the oboe or clarinet. And cuz he's someone your parent/grandparent really liked (I always though he was a wous).
[Edited 9/14/04 14:24pm]

OdysseyMiles said:

Because I fell asleep during his opening performance for anita baker in the late 80's.


FELL ASLEEP,,, I SAY!!!

The man is a great talent with no creativity.

sinisterpentatonic said:

WELL IT NOT KENNY GARRETT!

HE REAL GOOD

Harlepolis said:

hey well i was serious, that really did happen. and guess what she hasn't played him in her car since!!! i think another time she played him in the house, she tripped over something and fell, in case you haven't noticed, he really causes a commotion in my family. We don't play him at weddings, lord knows what would happen then...

Supernova said:

Thanks for diggin' that gem up.

"The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune -- consistently sharp."

The above is a HUGE deal on any instrument but especially with a soprano sax.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

sinisterpentatonic said:

The 3 things i've hated about the so called Smooth Jazz format.

1) Co-opting the term Jazz into their name for the cool factor instead of calling themselves what they really are...the unhip sounding Easy Listening.

2) The Playlist.

Marvin Gaye - I Heard it through the Grapevine
EW&F - September
Hall & Oates - Sara Smile
Roxy Music - Avalon
Bruce Hornsby - The Way It Is

These are tunes that I like, but they're not Jazz.
Hell, they're not even Smooth Jazz.

3) Google the terms "Smooth Jazz"+"Clear Channel".
Who wants to bet that your local "Easy Listening/Smooth Jazz" station pops up?


I haven't checked the release dates, but the format might be traced back to the unlikely source (based on his earlier works) of George Benson's Breezin'.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

Pat Methany's comments (I appreciate that interview, by the way), alluded to what I believe is the central bane for most of his critics:

Kenny G. is a mediocre-playing, curly-haired, Jewish man making a ton of money and gaining huge amounts of popularity on an instrument most widely associated with black men and soul.

In short, he's the Vanilla Ice or Justin Timberlake of the saxophone, and it ticks off a lot of people.

missfee said:

THIS IS THE FUNNIEST POST I READ ALL WEEK!